The roots of INSTRUCT AG lie in the academic world.
Martin Fischer, MD started organizing a working group for Medical Learning Systems
at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) Munich in 1993 in order to develop computer-aided learning
programs for medical and continuing education. These programs and cases were to be centered upon authentic,
real-life examples: How to help prospective physicians making correct decisions
for individual patients?
In 1994 the development of the CASUS - Learning system began.
The goal of this inter-disciplinary team of physicians, educators and IT professionals was
to build an easy-to-use authoring system for higher education instructors. Construction of
interactive, multimedia 'cases' should not require any programming skills. Instead,
'drag and drop' ease was incorporated enabling to bring practical working reality and
university teaching together, to the benefit of all.
The university of Munich first sponsored a pilot learning program dealing with
diseases and conditions of the Thyroid gland. From this beginning came the first model of what
would become the CASUS-Learning system, sponsored by the Robert Bosch Foundation in Stuttgart and the
German Federal State Comission.
The ProMediWeb project was developed in cooperation with the
Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf since 1996.
ProMediWeb is a webbased tool to work through cases with a standard webbrowser.
CASUS-Learning system and ProMediWeb are sponsored by the DFN-Verein
(Deutsches Forschungsnetz).
The CASUS-Learning system technology was
continually developed and expanded,
to become a standard for CBT learning. Up to now there have been created more than 250 cases in various
subspecialities like internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, neurology,
radiology, occupational medicine, anatomy or even law.
Case authors in Germany, in the U.S., Israel or Brazil are working
with the system creating new, up to date cases for their teaching.
A reference to the quality of these projects can be found here:
- the first prize for Software Innovation at MEDICA 1998 in Düsseldorf
- in the finalist group for the Software award of ASK 1998 in Karlruhe
- First Prize for Multimedia in Healthcare 2001
- Winner of the Medidaprix 2002
- Winner of the Merckle Prize 2003
We were greatly encouraged - and our long-term
viability has benefited - when in 1999 the academic part of the LMU working group Medical Learning systems
entered a founder's
/ entrepreneur's competition in Multimedia held by the National Ministry for Business and Technology
where we out of 450 entries, placed among the top ten.
The government of Bavaria has sponsored a project to promote
development in software technologies. As a result, in May 2000 INSTRUCT AG has been founded.
The combination of an interdisciplinary team of experts and an experienced and engaged board of
directors has prepared the Startup firm INSTRUCT for launching. The close and cooperative
involvement of content experts from the University is one of the most important facts that
make us now ready for successfully competing in the Information
Technology business world.
Home
